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Family History
Cuidad Valles to the United States My great grandmother was born and raised in a quaint city by the name of Cuildad Valles. While researching this land mass I discovered that Cuidad Valles is a tropical area full of valleys and rivers. Unfortunately for my family it was anther story. My great grandmother, Lydia Ortiz Vazques and her husband Moises Vasques wanted a better life for her five children and faced the trek to the United States where there were more opportunity for work and growth. This trek from Mexico had to be one of the toughest journeys my grandmother Orpha Garza, who was twelve at the time. My grandmother tells me stories of her mother traveling with five children at the time ranging from ages one-fifteen. My great aunt Neomi Vazquez Melendez who was fifteen at the time was unable to get across the border because of her age and improper paperwork. Her mother Lydia and the four other children crossed the border and stayed at a motel for weeks while the fifteen year old stayed behind at a motel in Mexico. Waiting until her mother and four sisters and brother managed to get across the border to the United States. My grandmother tells me stories of how scary it was at the age of twelve to take care of four babies and toddlers while her mother made the trek back and fourth from the United States to Mexico to make sure that all five of her children were on US soil. I cant image at the age of twelve, being in a completely foreign country for weeks trying to take care of infants while your mother bravely leaves the children in order to go back to Mexico to check on the fifteen year old while papers were being sorted out. Once my great grandmother and all five children legally across the borders they made their way to Wichita Falls Texas where my family settled and started a new life. My grandmother and great aunt were twelve and fifteen when they came to the United States. Wichita Falls was promising for these brave new kids but it wasn’t all fun and games. My grandmother went to school and only completed the seventh grade in Mexico. Dropped out in order to help her mother provide for the rest of the family. My grandmother and great aunt work at Spain Flower shop while their mother was taking careof children and supporting them through a job at the local laundry matt. Simultaneously they were trying to adapt and assimilate, learning English. My grandmother, Orpha Garza continued to work at the flower shop and was placing an order to the Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls when she locked eyes with a man by the name of Jerry Leonard Robinson. They married that following year and a short year later gave birth to my mother Donna Lee Robinson in 1958. Unfortunately Jerry was released from the Air Force that year on an honorable discharge. He was very sick and suffered a brain hemorrhage and died the following year in 1959. My mother Donna Lee was only a year old when he passed away. Jerry was born and raised in Prescott Iowa where his mother and father Carrol and Dorothy Lane Robinson farmed and had a strong tradition of hard work. After the death of my grandmother’s first husband’s death, she continued to work and raise her daughter. Shortly after in 1962 she met another man by the name of Hector Garza Flores in Wichita Falls. Hector and Orpha married that same year. They moved to Dallas Texas around 1964 for my grandmothers new job placement at a flowershop in Dallas. They settled in the Lakewood area of Dallas and my family has been there ever since. During the move my grandmother and grandfather gave birth to three girls and one boy over the next decade. This marriage is the brunt of my immediate aunts, uncle and cousins. The marriage of Hector and Orpha Garza birthed four three girls and one boy, each of whom are my aunts and uncles. With the addition of four aunts and uncles they have blessed me with eleven first cousins. Each of whom I am very close to. In the attached link I was able to generate a family tree that dates back four generations and containes over sixty of my family memebers by name.http://www.geni.com/family-tree Category:Family Tree